Liberal Democrat delegates gathered in Bournemouth in mixed spirits last weekend (16-19 September). While they regained some of their big names at the election in June, they had higher hopes than going from nine to twelve MPs. They started the election hoping to be the voice of Remainers, the 48 per cent, and called themselves “the only opposition”. Now Tim Farron has departed as leader and Vince Cable, the former business secretary, has taken his place.
With Labour as the renewed and radical opposition, question marks have hung over the role of the party after the election. This is not a recent phenomenon for the party either. In 2013, Jeremy Browne, a former Home and Foreign Office Minister in the Coalition, posed the question ‘why would you invent the Liberal Democrats?’. In 2014 he went a step further calling his party pointless. Former party leader Paddy Ashdown, in the run up to this conference, said the party had not managed to have “one big, dangerous idea” since the end of the Coalition with the Conservative party in 2015 and that it needed to get back in touch with its radical side, and in turn its voters. Bournemouth was the first opportunity to begin to do this.
Instead, the party seemed more preoccupied with the past than the future. Tim Farron took his opportunity to set out that his leadership helped “save” the party. Large portions of Vince Cable’s speech were used to justify the party’s time in coalition - including trying to reclaim policies like the pupil premium and the income tax threshold changes for low earners. The party clearly feels a need to rebuild some credibility, but in turn obsessing about the past in a prime-time speech leaves even less time for the party to set out anything new or worthwhile.
Perhaps this is because the party doesn’t have much new to say yet? The party’s policy development process is slow and complicated. Cable’s biggest announcement was a consultation on the party’s further education policy. Compare this to other leaders, whose speeches are brimming with ideas however big, small or poorly thought out.
Away from Cable’s speech, there was a simmering debate on Brexit within the party. Since the Brexit result in July 2016, the party has had a policy of having a referendum on the final deal and letting the people decide whether to remain in the EU or leave. Delegates only voted narrowly to retain this policy, with a large number of predominately new members instead voting to just oppose any exit with no fresh vote. Liberal Democrat conference rarely votes against a policy advocated by the leadership and a narrow vote shows some disquiet and desire for a fresh, bolder direction.
If the conference was a holding pattern, aiming to retain the interest of the party’s 100,000 plus members past the general election campaign, then Cable wasn’t the barnstorming messenger some would hope. For this people would have to look to Jo Swinson, the new deputy leader and heir apparent, who was willing to attack Trump and North Korea as she brazenly labelled both bullies. Even Tim Farron, fallen from grace after the election campaign, was the tub thumping speaker many members crave to keep their spirits up.
Vince Cable has claimed that he can lead the party back to power, even insisting that he is a plausible Prime Minister. Past the new “Exit from Brexit” slogan and a video which tries to make Cable cool, it’s not clear that Bournemouth was much of a leap forward for the party. Conference will have kicked off a series of meetings, strategies, consultations and proposals to take the party forward, many of which were put on hold by the election. After a while though they will need to act.
Two years on from 2015 the party is definitely still here - but the question that still hasn’t been answered is where are they going?
Bournemouth didn’t provide a definitive answer.